Harry Potter Works Magic Again

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the penultimate chapter in J.K. Rowling's epic fantasy series that went on sale around the globe at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, sold an astonishing 6.9 million copies its first day in bookstores in the U.S. alone.

The sales numbers for the 672-page hardcover book easily smashed the record set by the previous installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which raked in a whopping 5 million copies two years ago.

Most booksellers offered Half-Blood Prince, which retails for $29.99, at steep 40 percent discounts to spur the record sales.

Amazon.com, for example, peddled the book for $17.99; advanced orders have kept it at the top of the best-seller list with 1.5 million copies ordered before Saturday, making it the online retailer's largest new product release ever.

Thanks to Half-Blood Prince, Rowling was able to make a Gringott-sized deposit. The author, already the richest woman in Great Britain with a net worth estimated at $1 billion, made $36 million in royalties on Saturday--not a bad day's work. (That includes U.K. sales figures, which are hovering in the 2 million-copy range, according to Nielsen BookScan.)